The Biggest Loser Lost Too Much

The finale of the extreme weight loss reality show The Biggest Loser was Tuesday night, and it seems one of the contestants (the winner) finally went too far for viewers. Rachel Frederickson, who went home from the competition with a $250,000 check, lost 160 pounds over the course of about 5 months. At 5'4", she is now 105 pounds. (The photo at left shows Rachel with a hologram of her "before" self.)

As soon as she came out for the big reveal, fans started tweeting about how thin she'd gotten. Even the show's trainers, Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper, seemed alarmed:

But for her part, Rachel seemed happy with her win and her weight loss. She has not commented on the complaints that she looks too thin.

Plenty of viewers, young women especially, use The Biggest Loser as inspiration. They post about the show on Tumblr and track each contestant's weight loss, measuring it against their own. Some teens are now worried that they're too thin themselves, in light of the Rachel criticisms. One user posts:

To be clear, you absolutely cannot diagnose someone with an eating disorder by looking at them. You can't tell whether someone is healthy or unhealthy by looking at them. Which is pretty much the problem with The Biggest Loser in the first place — it's a "health" competition based entirely on the way you look and the number on the scale. While obesity is a certainly a problem in the U.S., a high-stakes reality competition show is the last thing that's going to solve it.

The Biggest Loser has long been criticized for glamorizing weight-loss-at-all-costs and pushing contestants too far. Kai Hibbard, who competed on the show in 2006, says the intense training regimen gave her "PTSD." She claims that the show's producers encouraged contestants to diet by dehydration and avoid liquids leading up to weigh-ins. Kai dropped 144 pounds during her time on the show, but has since gained some weight back. Another former contestant, posted this message to Facebook after watching last night's finale: